Prince of Wolves

by Dave Gross

  “There was a great explosion,” he said. Beside him, Tara nodded agreement. “Naturally, we assumed you had hurled a fireball at our attackers, scattering them.”

  It was a logical assumption, except for the fact that I had not prepared a spell of any sort in more than fifty years. The only reason one would assume I was even capable of casting a spell was that he had seen the spellbooks in my luggage. I was certain that I had not revealed the books to Casomir or Tara, so either one of them had surreptitiously examined my luggage or, perhaps, they had learned from Carmilla that I once studied magic. After all, it was Carmilla who had arranged our traveling together.

  And yet I had a clear image of fire in my mind, so I believed that something had exploded on that bridge. I knew only that I had not been the cause of the conflagration. The trick was in confirming whether Casomir was lying or simply misinterpreting his own observations. Without looking directly at her, I observed Tara’s reaction. Both she and her cousin appeared utterly sincere in their recollections of the misfortune at the Senir Bridge.

  “What happened afterward?” I asked.

  “The crash rendered you unconscious,” said Casomir. “All the servants were dead or missing, and the wolves fled.”

  “So you did see the wolves.”

  “Yes,” said Casomir. “But only as they fled the explosion. Several ran into the woods, their fur alight. It is a wonder they did not set the entire forest afire.”

  “And what of our rescue?”

  “The peasants of the nearest village saw the flames and sent help,” said Casomir. “They brought us down the mountain in a hay cart, sending word to Willowmourn of our misadventure. The next morning, my uncle Lucinean’s carriage arrived to convey us home.”

  I nodded. It was a cogent story, simple enough that it could be absolutely true, apart from the omission of seven or eight days’ additional events. Did Casomir not realize how simple it was for me to notice the difference in the moon? Granted, even an otherwise reasonable mind can overlook an obvious detail, but I could not help taking offense at his low estimation of my intellect. Still, it was better not to reveal how much I realized of the truth until after I learned much more about the reason for the subterfuge.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I recall some of what you have told me. I still cannot understand, however, why the wolves attacked in such force. Do you have any idea?”

  For the first time, Casomir looked as though he were thinking about what I had said rather than repeating a prepared story. “No,” he said. “I have no idea.”

  And for the first time since he had spoken that morning, I believed him.

  Chapter Ten

  The Fiddler’s Revenge

  Before I had a chance to smooth over our misunderstanding, Azra retreated inside the wagon and shut the door, leaving me to sleep outside. At least I didn’t have to worry about sudden attacks from my demon-eating chicken. Still, after what Azra had told me, I couldn’t bring myself to eat the rest. I buried the remains in the dirt beside the fire and sat down, wondering whether there was any truth to what she’d said about the demon inside me. Devil. Whatever.

  Hedge witches blend the divine and arcane with hokum and old wives’ tales. Even for a city boy it’s sometimes hard to decide whether you’re getting a magical potion or just snake oil. In general, if I can see it or feel it, I figure it’s the real thing. If I can’t, then I’m not buying.

  Not that Azra had asked me for anything yet. If she did, I didn’t have much to offer, apart from my unwelcome proposition. The last of my own clothes were probably ashes back in that village beside the river, and everything else of value had probably been traded for a kettle or a new pitchfork. All I had now were the secondhand rags of a pig farmer. At least they kept me warm and covered my tender bits, which still stung from whatever charm Azra had zapped me with. She was wicked in a temper!

  I had a lot of time to think about her reaction while I huddled beside the fire. Eventually I began to appreciate how Azra must have seen me before retreating to her wagon. Even after I’d figured what her missing tongue might mean, I hadn’t the good sense to realize the last thing she wanted was a naked man making crude advances. I wracked my brain for an apology that matched the offense, but I couldn’t think of one big enough.

  When she finally emerged from the wagon, Azra wouldn’t look at me, much less sign to me.

  “Good morning” got me nothing in return. She ignored “How about some breakfast?” and simply secured the last of the camp supplies back in the wagon. I skipped humor and compliments to avoid another quarrel. “You look exhausted,” I tried. “Want me to drive for a while?”

  That got her attention. I could see she was considering the idea. “Just point the way,” I said. “And maybe harness that donkey to the cart. I’m not so good with animals.”

  She pulled a sarcastic face but didn’t bother signing her retort. Instead, she spelled out L-U-M-I-N-I-T-A.

  “The donkey?”

  She nodded and went to the beast. She stroked Luminita’s nose and fed her half an apple from her skirt pocket. I kept a healthy distance. Azra beckoned me closer.

  “Not a good idea,” I said. “You saw what she did to me last time.”

  She shook her head and waved me over.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Animals hate me.”

  Azra sent me a glare that invited no argument.

  “All right,” I said, slowly approaching. Luminita brayed and tossed her head. Azra kept stroking her nose and cooed in her ear. She traced the wings of Desna on Luminita’s cheek. The path of her finger left a brief, glittering afterglow on the donkey’s fur.

  Come, Azra signed to me.

  I took another few steps. Luminita’s eyes widened. She stepped anxiously in place, edging slightly away until Azra gently tugged her back and waved me closer.

  When I was about three feet away, Azra held up her hand to stop me. Luminita nickered softly but held her ground. There was no question that what I’d just seen was real magic.

  Azra mimed the action of slapping reins and pointed west. She went into the back of the wagon, and I took the driver’s seat. When I shook the reins, Luminita obliged by pulling away at a slow but steady pace.

  The road was little more than a footpath, but it wound between the hills and crossed streams at their shallowest. Luminita knew the way, and I held the reins loosely in my lap as I admired the scenery. To the west and south, mountains rose up beyond brown fields and the black rectangles of distant farms. There were still traces of green on the north side of hills and beneath stands of trees, but the rest had surrendered to tawny autumn colors. I counted four more ragged Vs of geese flying for warmer climates. Their destination reminded me that I ought to find the boss’s body and return him to Egorian. I wasn’t well acquainted with his relatives, but the staff at Greensteeples would know who to inform.

  On the other hand, I was in no hurry to return for my own sake. Without the boss there, Egorian held more bad memories than good. Before we’d met, I’d been little more than a common criminal, not that my condition had bothered me at the time. I just didn’t know there was a better place for me. Since becoming the boss’s lookout, spy, and finally bodyguard, I’d learned more each year with him than in a decade among the Goatherds. Zandros never would have taught me to read anything other than an account ledger, and I never got to keep more than a fraction of what I stole for him.

  The fact was I could never repay the boss for all he’d done for me. I wished I’d told him so before it was too late.

  The wagon panels slapped open behind me. Azra leaned out and directed me to stop. I pulled on the reins as I’d seen drovers do, and Luminita slowed to a stop. I couldn’t help grinning. Because it was something I’d never been able to do before, driving a cart was one hell of a lot of fun.

  Azra handed me a pair of buckets and pointed to a nearby stream. By the time I returned with water, she’d unhitched Luminita and was brushing her flanks. I set the larger bu
cket a few feet from the donkey’s head, and she stepped forward to drink.

  “How long’s that charm last?” I asked Azra. She ignored the question and instead fetched a wicker box from the wagon. She set it before me. From village, she signed before returning to the wagon, where she shook out the carpet on which I’d lain during her healing ritual.

  In the basket I found the scorched remains of my once-fine leather jacket and pants, along with the best pair of kickers I ever owned, almost completely undamaged. Where the fabric had burned away, someone had patched the clothes with scraps of leather. The stitches were coarse thread, but they were tight and regular, sewn by a practiced hand. It looked a mess, but it would suit me better than this pig farmer’s garb. Better yet, all of my tools remained inside the sleeve pockets, along with my remaining throwing knives in their hidden sheaths. Beneath the clothes lay my purse, amazingly still full of the coins I had left after returning what I’d lifted from Nicola.

  I felt a queer pang of loss remembering Nicola’s death. It was one thing to miss the boss, but I did not expect to mourn his obsequious valet. I’d never liked Nicola much, but I should have been able to keep him out of trouble. Instead, it was my fault the wolves had come for us. In drawing them to the boss, I had become the opposite of a bodyguard.

  Azra touched my arm and offered me a look of concern.

  You are ill? she signed.

  I wiped the moisture from my eyes and gave her the little smile. “Road dust is all.”

  She wasn’t buying that, but she let it go. She made me watch as she checked the wheels for damage. Afterward she showed me how to inspect Luminita’s hooves for stones. The donkey was shod like a draft horse, and up close I realized how small she was compared to one. She had to be stronger than she looked to draw that wagon for days at a time. Azra sent me to refill the buckets while she replaced Luminata’s harness and hitched her to the wagon once more. When I returned, she climbed into the driver’s seat and slid over. She looked down, inviting me to join her there. I climbed aboard.

  As we rode, I asked her why the villagers had returned my things. She pointed at me and signed, Live undead, dead undead. She waggled her hand palm-down and grimaced. Difficult to know.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Dead alive, maybe you forgive, she signed. Dead not-dead, maybe you haunt.

  “They could have listened a little closer for my heartbeat.”

  She signed, Look demon.

  “So I’m hellspawn,” I said. “It’s not my fault. Some ancestor I never met had a dirty little secret. That’s no reason to turn me upside down, tie my thumbs, and set me on fire.”

  Maybe you curse them.

  “I’m not a witch,” I said.

  They bury me, I curse them, she signed. I curse them big.

  I was beginning to wonder whether I’d have been safer back in the village, but Azra had done me no harm since knocking me out, and I was willing to let that go after she healed me. Later I told her why I’d come to Ustalav, including the boss’s idea that I’d enjoy a visit to my parents’ homeland. I was pretty sure both my father and mother had been born here before they traveled to Cheliax. Azra asked me more about them. She frowned when I explained I didn’t know much more. I left out the sordid details, but I think she understood my parents hadn’t raised me.

  Azra seemed more interested in my encounter with the Sczarni, especially the Harrowing Malena had cast for me.

  What fortune? she signed.

  I had to admit I wasn’t paying much attention to the cards. I tried to remember them to humor her: The Tyrant, The Empty Throne, The Dance ...I couldn’t recall the rest. While I didn’t mention it to Azra, I had been a lot more interested in the contours of Malena’s shoulders than in the results of her Harrowing.

  “There was one odd card,” I said. “It was a man on a hill. There was a crown at his feet, and in the shadows there were lots of eyes. I never saw that one before.”

  Azra turned her whole body to look at me. She spelled out S-C-Z-A-R-N-I and made the sign for dangerous.

  “You don’t need to tell me, sister.”

  She signed some more, but I couldn’t follow it all. It was something about this particular group of Sczarni, that they were wolves. I explained I had already learned that the hard way, but I realized she knew much more of the Pathfinder finger-speech than I’d learned, or else there were different dialects.

  “You must know a Pathfinder,” I told her. Pathfinder, I signed for emphasis.

  She nodded but did not elaborate. I knew enough to change the subject.

  “This looks like a tinker’s wagon,” I said.

  She nodded. I took the reins from her, and she let me have them. After a few moments, she added, Uncle. Tinker.

  That jibed with what I’d seen inside the wagon. “You too?” I asked.

  No, she signed. Then she nodded. A little. I mend people.

  “Thanks again for that,” I said, grateful for the opening. “Say, I was a little giddy when I saw how much you’d healed me last night. If I came across as an ass—”

  She waved that off and set her eyes on the horizon. All right, I thought. On to another topic.

  “Pretty soon I should go back to the bridge where I fell,” I said. “My boss—his body, anyway—I should take it back home.”

  She looked at me and signed, You can’t.

  “What do you mean?”

  Too late.

  Oh, no, I thought. I should have realized by the size of the moon last night. Assuming those villagers fished me out of the river the morning after I fell, it should still have been a waxing crescent. “How long?” I asked.

  She made the sign for villages and held up three fingers.

  “How many days?” I asked.

  She spread the fingers of one hand and with her other hand added another finger.

  “Desna weeps,” I muttered. She wasn’t kidding it was too late. If no one else had found the boss by now, he was food for wolves.

  “Why didn’t you heal me sooner?” I tried not to sound angry but failed.

  Moon too small, she signed. Hurt too big. As if that explained anything.

  “Great,” I grumbled, but I knew it wasn’t her fault. If not for her, I’d be dead of my injuries.

  That wasn’t right. If not for her, I might have gone on a murderous rampage in that village. Part of me wasn’t grateful for that, but most of me was. I don’t often lose my temper. Of course, I’m not usually buried alive, set on fire, and stabbed with a pitchfork.

  We drove a while in silence while I felt sorry for myself and she left me to it. Eventually I asked, “Where are we headed?”

  Village, she signed, adding a curious gesture I didn’t recognize.

  “What village?” I asked.

  She repeated the gesture but saw I didn’t know it. She tried different signs.

  Broken village, she signed. Sad village. Cursed village.

  We stopped beside a pond that night. Azra told me not to take water from it, but even a city boy knows not to drink still water. Fortunately, between the buckets we’d filled earlier and her big jug of fresh water, we had plenty for Luminita and ourselves. Azra handed me an iron rack and spit from the wagon and pointed at a ring of black stones that had obviously been used by hundreds of previous travelers. Beyond it were a pair of crude tables, but my hope of dining at them vanished when I saw the signs of Desna and Pharasma carved onto their surface. Roadside shrines.

  While I prepared the fire, Azra gathered vegetables from a sack hanging in the wagon and began to prepare them on the tinker’s table on which I’d nearly brained myself earlier. When I saw how she was chopping them in quarters, I offered to trade chores with her. She gave me a skeptical frown but turned them over along with a chopping knife and a packet of waxed burlap. Inside I found a good-sized chunk of peppered mutton, no more than a couple of days old. It must have been a gift from the last village she visited before reviving me. I smelled the hanging her
bs and pinched off a few leaves from the ones I wanted, along with a couple of cloves of garlic from a bulb she’d previously plundered. The knife she’d given me was about as sharp as a candle, but her uncle had attached a good sharpening wheel to the worktable.

  I could work with that.

  An hour later I presented Azra with the nearest approximation possible, considering local resources, of Malla’s grilled lamb with garlic and vegetables. It smelled delicious, a damned sight better than that gruel she’d been feeding me during my convalescence. Better even than the black chicken, although the little pecker had tasted delicious before Azra’s scolding.

  Azra’s dubious expression had melted when she got her first whiff of supper, and she nodded her approval as she ate. I told her about plump, cheerful Malla and how I would sneak into the kitchen to steal a taste before she served the boss’s supper. I almost lost my appetite when I considered that I would probably never see her again.

  Azra raised a hand and turned her head as if to listen. I strained to hear, but there was nothing louder than the hiss of our cooking fire. Beside the wagon, Luminita raised her head high and lifted her ears. Azra stood up and walked away from the fire, still listening. I followed her lead and moved in the opposite direction, keeping her in sight but listening intently for anything that might have alarmed her.

  There was nothing.

  I looked back at her and signed, What?

  She waved it away, frowning. She gave up a moment later and signed, Nothing, but I couldn’t believe she would bolt up like that for no reason. We returned to the campfire, but she ignored her unfinished meal and went to the wagon. From various compartments above the tinker’s table, she added charms and roots and little phials to the pouches on her kirtle.

  “What did you hear?” I asked.

  Wind, she signed with a self-effacing shrug.

  “Tell me.”

  She met my gaze and sighed resignation. Wolves, she signed.